A nurse who sailed to Ecuador on a banana boat and spent more than 20 years there setting up an Aids foundation and opening up an orphanage has published her autobiography.

Brenda Hart, from Hawkhurst, is showing no signs of slowing up as at the age of 86 she has just completed her first book.

Entitled My Life So Far...it tells the story of the mother-of-three’s rollercoaster life from difficult beginnings in foster care and a TB sanitorium to her time as a young nurse in Ecuador in the 1960s, her creation of an Aids foundation and her altruistic time offering her home to children and young people who needed support.

After spending 21 years in South America, Brenda and her husband John set up home in Hawkhurst in 1980 before returning to Ecuador for 10 years in 1993, where they set up the Aids Foundation Orphaids.

Brenda, who returned to Hawkhurst 20 years ago and has spent the past five years nursing John through dementia, is donating all proceeds of her book to the Orphaids charity.

My Life So Far is available from Amazon.